Vanity
by TheSecretCity
Summary: Another post-Haley story, about Hotch and others, mainly Jack and Garcia. A series of snapshots. Now complete!
1. Smell

Smell

It was her specific scent, Dove soap and baby powder.

"Just tell me, Aaron. Did you love your goddamn job more then your wife and your son?"

He couldn't breath. "No."

"I asked you to leave it, and you didn't. You went right back to it and left us here. Abandoned us."

An autumn wind, carrying wet earth and crystallized water. She knew what those words were to him.

"No. Not like that. I didn't do that."

Of course he's desperate. She's going, going, gone.

"Yes you did. You left us. Now he got to us, you see. Jack doesn't have a mother and only half a father. He sees Jessica more then you."

"Haley, I'm trying. Please just come back. Please. I'll make it right."

The smell of baby powder running into blood. "There's no making it right anymore."

Hotch woke up, dripping wet, Jack sitting up in the bed, saying "Daddy, wake up, it's a bad dream, Daddy, wake up."

"I'm awake, buddy. I'm awake now."

They both breathed in the silence, then Jack crawled back into Hotch's arms. Hotch wrapped him up. "Sorry, buddy."

"It's a bad dream, Daddy. You don't gotta be sorry unless I gotta be sorry."

"Touché," Hotch agreed.

Just when he thought Jack had dropped off to sleep, his son asked "Was it a bad dream about Mommy?"

"About Mommy being gone," which was true.

"I'm glad you're not gone too, Daddy."

He tightened his grip on Jack. "I'm glad you're not gone, either. I-"

"What, Daddy?"

Jack smelled like soap, too. "I don't want to be alone."

"Me either."

On that note Jack settled down into sleep.


	2. Taste

Taste

Garcia was famous for bringing cookies to work on Fridays. Not little cookies. Big homemade ones the size of plates. She would cycle around the bullpen, JJ's office, Rossi's office, and finally finish her rounds at Hotch's. And she saved extra for Jack.

Haley had baked cookies when they were married, chocolate ship and peanut butter and sugar. He had often snuck some into his pocket on the way out the door to snack on later when no one was looking. She would discover the missings and call him at work, wherever he happened to be.

"Aaron, why am I missing three cookies?"

"Two and a half."

"Half a cookie counts as a whole, mister. Like cell phone minutes. Guilty?"

"As charged. But they're irresistible. I can't help myself."

"How many times do you hear that in the interrogation room?"

"Sometimes it's true."

And now Garcia, with her weekly offerings. Chocolate chip this time. She knocked and came in, beaming.

"Garcia, are you fattening me for the slaughter?"

"Why? You're perfect."

"I thought that was Morgan."

"Morgan is a god made of chocolate. You are the cream on my cappuccino."

"That just sounds wrong."

"It is. And I saved some for Jack."

"He loves Aunt Penelope's cookies. I probably wouldn't get let in without them."

Garcia left the bright plate piled with cookies. He suspected that he and Jack got the lion's share every week.

When he got home, he would say goodnight to Jessica. Then he and Jack would save the dinner she had cooked and eat cookies for supper instead, breaking them and dunking them heavily in milk. Then they'd have dinner for breakfast the next day so Jessica wouldn't suspect her nephew was being feed a meal of sugar once a week. Come to think of it, Haley wouldn't like it either.

He still had a picture of her on his desk. "Still trying, honey."


	3. Touch

Touch

The gun grip was more familiar then his hand, an extension of his hand if anything. Smooth. Cool. Assuring.

He was cleaning it while Jack watched TV, pausing to hold the grip. Disgusted.

The grip was exactly like Haley's hands after a case.

When he would come home from an especially bad one, no matter the hour, she'd met him at the door. He'd drop his bags and hold her, the butt of his Glock in the way. She'd take him upstairs and he would lock up the gun. And she'd run her hands over his face and through his hair. Smooth. Cool. Assuring.

She never asked about his cases. She didn't want to know, and he didn't want to tell her. Maybe those secrets hadn't been good for them. Maybe he should have told her why he felt complied to chase all the bad guys down and lock them up. He never had a problem with listening, asking questions of her day. Those answers were his refuge, a normal life he couldn't have no matter how hard he tried to be just a husband and father while not on a case.

"Daddy," Jack's hands on his face. "Don't cry."

He blinked away the blur, set the gun down, and picked Jack up. "Sorry, buddy."

"It's okay." Tiny hands around his neck. "Daddy? Can I be an FBI agent when I grow up?"

Remember how to talk, Aaron. "Why?"

"So I can catch bad guys like you."

"The bad guys do really bad things, Jack. Are you sure you want to be an FBI agent?"

Jack nodded. "If everybody wanted to catch bad guys there wouldn't be as many. So I'll catch bad guys like you, and there won't be as many. I already helped catch a bad guy and I'm only four, Daddy. You and I caught Mommy's bad guy. We're like Batman and Robin."

"Yes. I couldn't have caught him without you." And it was true. If Jack hadn't hidden, given him the time, Foyet would've killed Jack too and gone to ground, waiting for the next opportunity to cause him hell.

"So I'm like an FBI agent in training."

"A very good agent in training."

"So can I join the FBI when I grow up?"

The gun grip felt the same as Haley's hand, except it couldn't rub away the headaches like she had. "Yeah. When you're older."

"And you'll teach me?"

"I promise." Promise to teach Jack about love, about his mother. And now about guns and killing and all the horrible things people do.

"How you put your gun back together?"

He settled Jack onto his knee. "Okay. Watch and I'll show you how to put it back together."


	4. Sound

Sound

It was Haley's poetry book. She had kept scraps of paper in it, poems of others, a few quick lines of her own, each indistinguishable from the others, all her own hand. It had been in the dresser, forgotten in her haste to go into witness protection.

_Insanity is vanity,_

_To think you have the luxury,_

_And the audacity to imagine,_

_That any one would notice,_

_The unraveling of your mind._

Where had she found it, this poem? But he knew. This wasn't a copy. It rang with her clear voice, hardened by the life he gave her.

_Your inner world expressed before you,_

_A refuge, a pretty one,_

_Hiding you from the reality of life,_

_Making you a weakling,_

_A pale piteous thing,_

_Pretending you can go insane!_

There was no date. But the edges had yellowed, the ink curled on itself. This was her steeling herself for the phone call where she'd told him how it would be. She would have Jack, and he could visit, naturally. But she wouldn't be his wife any longer.

_With whose permission and by what right,_

_Do you refuge in your spirit?_

_Call on courage, summon resolve,_

_Walk forward without help or pity,_

_What you seek in insanity,_

_Is only human vanity._

He put it in the box for Jack, when he was older. He deserved to know all about his parents, even the bad, when he was old enough that it didn't confuse him too badly.

The slow motion of his life, Jack's life, suddenly made him want to break something. A picture. A chair. Foyet, again and again.

_Insanity is vanity_.

She may as well have spoken in his ear. What good would it do? She had had Jack. Jack kept her sane by his presence. Now he would be Hotch's reason to not give in and go over the edge. Who would take care of his baby, if he didn't? _Insanity is vanity_.

It didn't sting, now. Not any more then iodine on a cut. Her voice was still in his ear, encouraging.


	5. Sight

Sight

It was Jack who had collected the videos with Haley in them. He had put them all in his new room, and brought several out every night to watch. Not to see them as a family-to see her. 

As she was, with short blonde hair. His birthday parties, Christmases past, when she had been pregnant with him, before. He had even found the video of his parents wedding.

That was in the player now. Haley in an ivory dress that skimmed the floor, a family heirloom. Hotch in his rented tuxedo-he hadn't been promoted to the BAU yet, still just a regular agent with a smaller paycheck. They were cutting the cake.

It was a work of art, that cake, created by her mother and sister, tiers constructed as a reflection of her dress, with yellow roses like what was in her bouquet and her hair. He was carefully slicing a piece off the top, her whole family teasing loudly-"Careful, Aaron!" "Don't bust it, bud! I can't save you from them!" "You be that careful with the bride, now!"

He had extracted a piece of cake and held it out to her. She leaned over and took a bite, getting icing on her nose, giggling. "Nice, man! Classy!" " Shoulda just shoved it in her face!" An off-camera punch from another to the speaker, a couple of Haley's cousins, and then "Stupid, that was how you got your nose broke on your wedding day!" "Oh yeah, I forgot. Never mind that one, man!"

He had leaned over and kissed her, getting the icing on his face and accidentally dropping part of the piece on his tux. The shop had charged him extra for the cleaning.

It had been a summer wedding at her parents house. As the day wore into evening, when the party and the dancing wound up, she had changed into an equally pale confection, a lacy cocktail dress, and they had waltzed around the grass of the lawn. 

Technically, Jack should be going to bed. He should go up and tell his son it was time for pjs and brushing his teeth. He went and sat down beside him. Jack snuggled up to him. 

"Did you see the one where Mommy and I are having Thanksgiving dinner with Grandma and Grandpa and Aunt Jessie, and Aunt Jessie decided she was going to pour gravy all over me and Mommy?"

"No she didn't!"

"Yeah she did. Want to watch that next?"

"Sure. Aren't you gonna tell me its bedtime?"

"It's Friday. Everyone stays up late on Friday."

"Can I stay up late next Friday, too?"

"And we'll eat ice cream, too. Chocolate with chocolate chips. Just don't tell Aunt Jessie."

"No way, Daddy. I like eating cookies for dinner."

He shifted Jack a little closer as Haley threw her bouquet.

Author's Note: There's one more chapter left that I need to write, about Hotch going to see Haley's headstone. I haven't decided yet if Jack should go with him. Thoughts, please! And why does this thing keep underlining all my stuff? Jeez Loiuse.


	6. Epilogue: Spiritus

Epilogue: Spiritus

It was the day Haley's headstone was to be put in, replacing the little green marker with her name, as if she were a houseplant or a garden row.

Jack was with Jessica. Hotch had only been able to bring him once since Haley had died, and that was for the funeral. He'd have to bring him again, but not today.

When he got the headstone ordered, he'd taken Rossi. Jessica had been with Jack then, too. But Rossi had simply showed up and gone with him.

There was a rose on it, underneath her name. And then the traditional 'Beloved Wife and Mother'. And a quote, from Haley's poetry book.

"_Know that you were loved utmost._"

He suspected the hand of heavy-drinking contemporaries of Lord Byron were responsible for that. Or a postwar German who came of age in the fifties and sixties. Possibly, and most likely, it was something Haley had written when her aunt died last year.

He could see himself tending that headstone until he was old, more married and faithful in her death then in her life. He would pull back weeds and plant her favorite flowers-violets, Shasta daisies. Jack would join him for a time, but then he would grow older, and rather be with friends then at his mother's grave. And Hotch would tend it himself, until he was bent and buried next to her. And then Jack would tend their graves.

"Don't live for death, Aaron," Rossi had warned him after her stone had been ordered. "Make sure you live for life, too."

"I won't ignore Jack, Dave," and Dave had shaken his head, convinced Aaron hadn't heard him.

He had. He knew he'd have to move on. But not yet.

Author's Note: I apologize for the horrible poem in Chapter Five. I wrote that. Myself. Because I couldn't find one expressing what I wanted. Please review, I love them!


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